Historical

Paul speaks to Agrippa

26 King Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You may now say what you think about this problem.’

Paul raised his hand so that people would listen to him. ² He said, ‘King Agrippa, I am happy that you are here. I ask you to listen to me today. These Jews say that I have done some bad things. I will explain to you what is really true about all these things. ³ You yourself know all about the Jews. You know about how we live. You also know the things that we argue about with each other. So please be patient and listen to me.

⁴ The Jewish people have known me since I was born. They all know how I have lived among them. They knew me in the region where I was born. When I came to Jerusalem, they also know how I lived there. ⁵ So they have known me for a long time. They could tell you that I always obeyed our Jewish laws. They know that I was a Pharisee. I carefully obeyed God's Law, as a Pharisee does. But maybe they do not want to tell you all that. ⁶ So what is the reason that I stand here today for you to judge me? It is because I believe in God's promise to our ancestors. ⁷ He promised a great thing to our 12 Israelite families. We all expect to receive what God has promised to us. That is why we Jews always worship God, in the day and in the night. Like these Jews here, I believe in God's great promise. But that is the reason that they speak against me. ⁸ Is it impossible for God to cause dead people to become alive again? You should surely believe me when I say that.

⁹ I myself wanted to work against Jesus, the man from Nazareth, and against his message. ¹⁰ That is what I was doing in Jerusalem. The leaders of the priests gave me authority to put many of the believers in prison. I agreed with our leaders when they said, “These people must die.”

¹¹ I went to our Jewish meeting places to take hold of believers. I told my men to punish them. I tried to make the believers say bad things against God. I was very angry with them. So I even travelled to cities in other countries to punish them.

¹² For that reason, one day I was travelling to Damascus. The leaders of the priests in Jerusalem had sent me there. They had given me authority to take hold of the believers there. ¹³ Listen to this, King Agrippa! I was travelling along the road at midday. Suddenly I saw a very bright light in the sky. It was much brighter than the sun. It shone all round me and also round the men who were with me. ¹⁴ All of us fell down to the ground. I heard a voice that spoke to me in my own language, Hebrew.^[a] He said “Saul, Saul, why do you fight against me? You are like an ox that kicks against its master's stick. So you are hurting yourself.”^[b]

¹⁵ “Lord, who are you?” I asked.

He replied, “I am Jesus. And you are fighting against me. ¹⁶ Now you must get up. Stand on your feet. I have chosen you to be my servant. That is why I have appeared to you today. You must tell other people about what you have seen. After that, I will show you other things that you must tell people. ¹⁷ I will send you to speak about me to Jews and to Gentiles. Some of them will want to hurt you. But I will keep you safe. ¹⁸ You will help them to understand what is really true. They are like people who live in the dark. Teach them what is true about me. Then they will be like people who live in the light. Now Satan has power over them. Lead them from there into God's kingdom. Then God will forgive them for the wrong things that they have done. Because they believe in me, God will accept them as his own people.” ’

Paul tells Agrippa and Bernice about his work for God

¹⁹ ‘So you should know this, King Agrippa. I obeyed the things that I heard from heaven that day. ²⁰ First, I taught God's message to the Jews in Damascus. Then I also taught God's message to the Jews in Jerusalem and in all of Judea region. Later I also spoke to the Gentiles. I said to all of them, “You must stop doing wrong things. You must turn to God. You must do good things. That will show that you have really changed how you live.” ²¹ That is the reason that the Jews took hold of me in the yard of the temple. That is also the reason why they wanted to kill me. ²² But God has helped me every day, even until today. So now I stand here and I can tell you what is true. I say the same thing to people who are very important and to people who are not important. I am telling you the same things that Moses and God's other prophets wrote about. They also said that these things would happen. ²³ They said that God's special Messiah would have much pain and he would die. But God would raise him up to be alive again. He would be the first dead person to become alive and not die again. In that way, he would show God's message and bring light to people. He would save both Jewish people and Gentiles. That is what the prophets and Moses wrote. And I say the same thing.’

²⁴ While Paul was still speaking to Agrippa, Festus shouted at him, ‘Paul, your mind is confused! You have learned many things. But all these things are making you crazy.’

²⁵ Paul said, ‘Festus, sir, I am not crazy. Everything that I have said is true. It is not difficult to understand. ²⁶ King Agrippa knows about these things. He understands what I am talking about. None of these things happened in secret places. So I am sure that he has heard news about all this. ²⁷ King Agrippa, do you believe what God's prophets taught? I know that you do believe them.’

²⁸ Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘Can you change what I believe in this short time? Should I become a Christian already? Is that what you think?’

²⁹ Paul answered him, ‘It is not important if it takes a long time or a short time. I pray to God for you and for everyone who is listening to me today. I pray that you may all become like me. But I would not want you to become a prisoner like me!’

³⁰ Then King Agrippa, the ruler Festus, and Bernice all got ready to leave. Everyone else there also stood up. ³¹ After they left the meeting room, they said to each other, ‘This man has not done anything bad. We should not kill him, or even hold him in prison.’

³² King Agrippa said to Festus, ‘We could have let this man go free from the prison. But he has asked that Caesar should judge him. So we cannot let him go free.’

Soldiers take Paul to Rome

27 Some time after that, Festus decided that we should sail to Italy. So he commanded a soldier called Julius to guard Paul and some other prisoners. Julius was an officer in the Roman army. He had authority over 100 soldiers in a group called ‘The Emperor Augustus Group’.^[c]

² We went onto a ship that had come from Adramyttium. This ship was ready to leave. It would sail to the towns on the coast of Asia region. A man called Aristarchus also sailed with us. He came from a city in Macedonia called Thessalonica.

³ The next day after we left Caesarea, we arrived at Sidon. Julius was kind to Paul. He said, ‘Paul, you can go and visit your friends here. They can give you anything that you need.’ ⁴ Then we sailed out across the sea again. But the wind was blowing against our ship. So we sailed round the island called Cyprus. We sailed on the side of the island where the wind was not strong. ⁵ When we were near to Cilicia and Pamphylia, we sailed straight across the sea. Then we arrived at Myra, in the region called Lycia. ⁶ The Roman officer found another ship there. It had sailed from Alexandria and it would sail to Italy. So the officer put us on this ship. ⁷ We sailed slowly for several days. It was difficult to sail, but after some time we arrived near the town of Cnidus. Because of the strong wind, we could not continue to sail in that direction. So we sailed along the side of the island called Crete, where the wind was not strong. We sailed past the point of land called Salmone. ⁸ It was still difficult to sail, so we sailed near to the coast. Then we arrived at a place called ‘Safe Port’. This port was near to the town of Lasea.

⁹ We remained there for many days. By then it had become dangerous to continue the journey. It was already after the Day of Atonement.^[d]

So Paul spoke to the army officer and to the sailors. ¹⁰ He said, ‘Friends, I understand that now our journey will be dangerous. The ship may break in pieces. You may lose the things that the ship is carrying. All of us may even die.’ ¹¹ But the army officer did not believe what Paul said. Instead, he decided to do what the owner of the ship and the captain said.^[e]

¹² This port was not a good place for a ship to remain during the winter. Most of the men on the ship wanted to continue the journey. They wanted to sail as far as Phoenix, if they could get there. They could stay there for the winter. Phoenix was a port on the island called Crete. It was open to the sea both to the south-west and to the north-west.^[f]

The ship is in a storm

¹³ The wind began to blow from the south, but it was not strong. So the sailors thought, ‘Now we can do what we wanted to do. We can sail to Phoenix.’ So they pulled up the ship's anchor and left the port. Then we sailed as near as we could to the coast of Crete.

¹⁴ But soon a very strong wind began to blow. This wind blew from the north-east and it blew strongly across the island. ¹⁵ The storm hit the ship very powerfully. It was not possible for the sailors to sail the ship straight into the wind. So they did not try to do that any more. Instead, they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁶ After that, we passed the south end of a small island called Cauda. Here we found a place where the wind did not blow so strongly. The sailors lifted the ship's small boat out of the water to make it safe. ¹⁷ They tied it on the ship with ropes. Then they tied some more ropes under the ship so that it would not break in pieces. The men were afraid of what might happen. There were some places along the coast of Libya where the water was not very deep. The ship might hit one of these places and then it might break. So they took the ship's largest sail down. Then they let the wind blow the ship along. ¹⁸ The strong storm continued to blow against the ship. The ship was carrying many things. So the next day, the sailors threw some of these things into the sea. ¹⁹ The day after that, they took hold of the sails and ropes and they threw them into the sea. ²⁰ For many days, we did not see the sun or any stars.^[g] The storm continued to blow strongly. So then we thought, ‘It is not possible for us to remain alive.’

²¹ The men on the ship had not eaten any food for a long time. So Paul stood in front of them and he said, ‘Men, you should have listened to me! We should not have sailed away from Crete. If we had not left there, the ship and everything on it would still be safe. ²² Now I ask you, please be brave. The storm will completely destroy the ship, but not one of you will die. ²³ Last night one of God's angels spoke to me. I am a servant of God and I belong to him. He sent his angel to come to me. ²⁴ The angel said, “Paul, do not be afraid. You must go to Rome and Caesar will judge you there. Because of you, God will be kind to all the people on the ship with you. None of them will die.” ²⁵ Because of the angel's message, I say to you, “Be brave, my friends!” I trust God. I know that everything will happen in the way that the angel told me. ²⁶ But the wind will blow the ship so that we hit an island.’

²⁷ The storm had continued for 14 days and nights. The strong wind was blowing the ship across the Mediterranean Sea. About midnight, the sailors thought that we were near to the land. ²⁸ So they used a rope to measure how deep the water was. They saw that the water was nearly 40 metres deep. A short time later they did this again. This time the water was only 30 metres deep. ²⁹ The sailors were afraid that the ship would hit some rocks. So they dropped four anchors on ropes from the back of the ship into the sea.

After that, they prayed that dawn would come soon. ³⁰ Some of the sailors tried to leave the ship. They put the small boat into the sea. They tried to go away secretly. They said, ‘We are going to the front of the ship to put some more anchors down into the sea.’ But that was not true. ³¹ Paul said to the army officer and to the soldiers, ‘These sailors must stay on the ship. If they do not stay, you will not be safe. You will die.’ ³² So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the small boat to the ship. The small boat fell into the water and the wind blew it away.

³³ Now it was almost dawn. Paul said to everyone, ‘Please eat some food. You have now waited for 14 days for the storm to stop. You did not know what would happen. You have not eaten anything during all that time. ³⁴ You must eat some food now. Then you will be strong enough to stay alive. None of you will die. You will not even lose one hair from your head.’

³⁵ After Paul said this, he took some bread in his hands. He stood in front of them all and he thanked God for the bread. Then he broke the bread into pieces and he began to eat it. ³⁶ Everyone became less afraid and we all ate some food. ³⁷ There were 276 people on the ship. ³⁸ After everyone had eaten enough, the sailors threw bags of wheat off the ship into the sea. Then the ship was not so heavy.^[h]

The sea completely destroys the ship

³⁹ In the morning, the ship was near to some land, but the sailors did not recognize the place. They saw a place on the shore where there was a lot of sand. They wanted to drive the ship onto the sand. ⁴⁰ So the sailors cut the ropes which had the anchors on them. They left the anchors there in the sea. They also removed the ropes which had tied the rudders. Then they raised the sail at the front of the ship. Now the wind could blow the ship straight towards the shore. ⁴¹ But there was a place in the sea where the water was not deep. The ship sailed onto the sand in this place and it stayed there. The front of the ship pushed into the sand and it could not move. The sea was very strong and it hit against the back of the ship. As a result, the back of the ship broke into pieces.

⁴² The soldiers decided to kill the prisoners that they were guarding. They did not want these men to swim to the land and escape. ⁴³ But the army officer wanted to save Paul. So he commanded the soldiers not to kill the men. Instead he said, ‘Everyone who can swim, jump into the water first. Then swim to the shore. ⁴⁴ You other people must follow them. Hold on to pieces of wood, or pieces of the ship.’

In this way all of us got safely out of the sea and we arrived on the land.

Paul on the island of Malta

28 So then we were on the shore and we were all safe. We discovered that the island was called Malta. ² The people who lived on the island were very kind to us. Rain was falling and the weather was cold. So the people lit a fire and they helped all of us. ³ Paul picked up some small branches to put on the fire. When he did this, a dangerous snake came out from among the sticks. It had felt the heat from the fire. The snake bit Paul's hand and it held on to it. ⁴ The people who lived on the island saw the snake. They saw that it was hanging from Paul's hand. So they said to each other, ‘We know now that this man murdered someone. He did not die in the sea but now the snake will kill him. The god who punishes people for the bad things that they do will not let him live.’ ⁵ Then Paul waved his hand about so that the snake fell off into the fire. The snake had not hurt Paul in any way. ⁶ So the people watched Paul carefully. They thought that his body would become very sick. They thought that he might die suddenly. They waited for a long time. But they did not see anything bad happen to Paul. So then they thought something different about Paul. They said, ‘This man is certainly a god!’

⁷ There was an important officer who ruled the island. He was called Publius. He had some fields near to the shore where we had made the fire. He was very kind to us. He asked us to stay in his house. We stayed there for three days. ⁸ Publius's father was lying in bed because he was ill. His body was hot and he was very sick. Paul went into his room to see him. Paul prayed for him and he put his hands on the man's head. As a result, the man became well again. ⁹ After Paul did this, the other sick people on the island came to him. He caused them also to become well again. ¹⁰ The people gave us many gifts. Later, we got ready to leave the island on another ship. They gave us the things that we needed for the journey.

¹¹ When we left Malta, we had been there for three months. We got on a ship that was called ‘The Twin Gods’.^[i] It had come from Alexandria and it had stayed in Malta during the winter.

¹² We sailed across the sea and we arrived at the city of Syracuse. We stayed there for three days.^[j]

¹³ We left Syracuse and we sailed to the city of Rhegium. The next day, the wind began to blow from the south, so we sailed more quickly. The day after that, we arrived at the town of Puteoli.^[k]

¹⁴ We found some believers there. They asked us to stay with them for one week. After this we travelled to Rome. ¹⁵ The believers in Rome had heard about us. So they came out of the city to meet us at ‘The Market of Appius’ and ‘The Three Hotels’.^[l] When Paul saw the believers, he thanked God for them. He was very happy that they had come to meet him.

¹⁶ When we arrived in Rome, the Roman officer said to Paul, ‘You may live in a house by yourself, but a soldier will guard you there.’

¹⁷ After three days, Paul asked the leaders of the Jews in Rome to meet with him. When they met together, Paul said to them, ‘Friends, I am a Jew as you are. I tell you that I have never done anything bad against our people. I have always obeyed the rules that our ancestors gave to us. But the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem took hold of me. They gave me to the Roman rulers so that they would judge me. ¹⁸ The Roman rulers asked me questions about what I had done. They discovered that I had not done anything wrong. There was no reason that they should kill me. So they wanted to let me go free. ¹⁹ But the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem did not agree with that. So then I asked the Roman rulers to send me here to Rome. I wanted Caesar himself to judge me. That was the only thing that I could do. I did not want to say anything bad against my own people. ²⁰ That is why I want to talk with you now. I want to tell you why I am a prisoner here. It is because I believe in the one that God promised to send to us who are Jews.’

²¹ The Jewish leaders said to Paul, ‘We have not received any letters about you from Judea. Our Jewish friends who have come here from Judea have not told us this news. They have not said anything bad about you. ²² But we know that people everywhere are saying bad things about your new group. So we would like you to tell us your ideas.’

²³ So the Jewish leaders in Rome chose a day to meet again with Paul. When that day arrived, a large number of Jews came to the house where Paul was staying. Paul talked to them from the morning until the evening. He explained his message about the kingdom of God. He showed them what Moses and the other prophets had written in the Bible. He tried to show them that Jesus was God's special Messiah. ²⁴ Some of them believed that Paul's message was true. But other Jews who were there would not believe him. ²⁵ They argued about it with each other. When they began to leave the house, Paul said, ‘The Holy Spirit spoke a true message to your ancestors. He gave this message to Isaiah, the prophet:

²⁸ Paul then said to the Jews there, ‘You do not want to listen to God's message. But the Gentiles will listen! They will understand how God will save them.’

²⁹ [After Paul had said this, the Jews left. They were still arguing with each other.]^[m]

³⁰ Paul lived in a house in Rome for two years. He paid money to live in the house. Many people came to visit him there. He was very happy to see them all. ³¹ He told people clearly about the kingdom of God. He taught them about the Lord Jesus Christ. He was not afraid to speak strongly. Nobody tried to stop him.